I recently expressed to Jeremy the unlikelihood of my voting for Obama again, and listed a few reasons. He responded that he understood my disappointment in Obama and “share[d] it in some ways,” but that I was “blinded by idealism.”
In the interest of bringing discussions like this out of email and into the public, let me expand upon my argument and respond to some of Jeremy’s points. For brevity’s sake, I’ll keep it to two points.
Obama continues torture
“I’m under the impression that we have stopped waterboarding and most forms of enhanced interrogation.”
Jeremy’s impression is technically correct; President Obama signed an order on his first day in office to ban waterboarding and other techniques. But forces in the field can still employ prolonged isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, and force-feeding, techniques which have been cited as cruel and unusual. Moreover, the rendition program, in which we transfer prisoners to other countries (like Libya) to be tortured, continues uninterrupted. Most troubling is a report that the CIA has a complex in Somalia, where it directly pays guards’ salaries, and to which it brings prisoners from all over the world, god help them.
Beyond the policies themselves, the fact that Obama gave a pass to the enablers and architects of the torture program means that those choices remain open to future administrations. Because he refused to prosecute them as crimes, they have now become policy positions, on which respectable people can disagree. You have a Republican field saying they would bring back waterboarding, but if Obama were honest about how hard and dirty he’s fighting the terrorists he’d win every red vote in the country. Which brings us to our next point.
Drone bombing continues
“I support the drones, mainly because I don’t want US troops on the ground.”
This presumes that we need to attack or invade any country in which a so-called “terrorist” is found. And it blindly ignores the fact that so many civilians, even children, are killed by these sky robots of death. It is a heartless and backward policy, which is bound to result in deadly blowback for America.
“You never come up with anything as an alternative to drone strikes, you only reply with the same tired bumper-sticker ideology of ‘killing a terrorist creates more’. How will you feel when [someone] succeeds in blowing up a truck bomb in Times Square?
Sadly, something terrible like this is very likely to occur as a result of these strikes. The failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, very nearly pulled off the trick, and cited American drone attacks in Pakistan as one of his motivations. The drones “don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody,” he said in court.
At a meeting last month, Pashtun tribal elders described the sounds of drones hovering over their villages during the day, and launching Hellfire missiles at night. A teenager who volunteered to gather evidence of civilian deaths was killed by a drone one week later. My “alternative” to drone strikes is the absence of drone strikes. I do not believe in a military solution to the problem of terrorism; I would point out that ten years of war in Afghanistan did not prevent Faisal Shahzad from acting, but 3 years of drone strikes compelled him to act.
These are some of the foreign policy failures of Barack Obama, a president who ran on a platform of restoring America’s reputation in the Muslim world. As Jeremy said, Obama’s election bought us much goodwill in the Middle East. But that has all been squandered by his policy decisions. The evidence shows a clear and steady decline. I would argue that these trends will eventually lead to more, not less, terrorist attacks against the US.
I understand that you have some disappointment in Obama, and there a lot of ways to take the discussion and respond to, but let me just respond on the question of drones.
I find your position ridiculously naïve. No one is happy when non-combatants are killed (except Islamic terrorists, who actually go for that) and I don’t mean to sound blase about their deaths. But the Pashtun code of how they handle their guests is really the problem, as is the Pakistani governments two-faced approach in supporting these networks in the tribal areas while telling the US that it’s doing all it can to stop them.
Faizal Shahad planned the Times Square bombing from Pakistan! His case is one that should be made to support drone strikes, not end them. You put a troubling amount of stock in the words of a murderous extremist, my friend. And again you give no alternative to the drone strikes other than just ending them. Great, so they they have a totally uncontested sanctuary to plan attacks. You think they’ll stop plotting attacks at the West if drone strikes stop? C’mon, man.
I’m not saying that drone strikes are the only option. But Obama has made gutsy calls that have saved US lives and strengthened the foreign policy of our country.
Perhaps you are so willing to listen to someone like Shahad because you are two are not strange bedfellows, extremists just of a different sort…..
Ending drone attacks would be a small step in the right direction, but no, it won’t end the threat of terrorism overnight. There has to be an all-around easing of aggression in American foreign policy – a genuine change in attitude – and we must hone a new reputation throughout the world, which will take time. Generations of violence sown will take generations of peaceful nonviolence to uproot.
As to the nature of the threat, I see less danger in lone wolves and weirdos, many of whom are closely tracked and even encouraged by the FBI, than I do in traditional warfare between states breaking out amidst economic and environmental catastrophe, or, say, the fact that 17,000 children here in New York City will sleep in homeless shelters tonight. How can government officials simultaneously say that al-Qaeda is “operationally ineffective” and yet “will remain a major security threat for years”? A more serious effort to actually reduce the threat of Islamist terrorism would involve devoting serious American resources to reconstruction and medical necessities in flood-ravaged parts of Pakistan. Maybe, instead of building a “secret” CIA torture facility in Somalia, Obama could have focused on alleviating epic drought and famine in that country.
The source of Jeremy’s support for aerial bombing is his conviction that America owns the world, and as the most powerful nation, is above the law. This aggressive behavior, which has a long and distinctive history in America, will yield diminishing returns as the economic power of the global south rises. Instead of reversing this foolish American path, Obama has accelerated it, with frightening potential consequences for all of us.